5/18/13

Ayn Rand Had No Idea What Could Happen!

During the 2013 Election Cycle a favorite author and philosopher of the Far Right became famous all over again and it seemed that half the country was spouting "Ayn Rand" as the perfect and desirable example of culture-think. This extends to both the worship of, and blank check to... wealthy industrialists (or just rich capitalists in general) and overwhelming disdain for all the rest.

How aristocratic to be dismayed and disgusted by the filthy masses - they are like a plague of rats and roaches!

It seems to me that too many of Rand's fans see themselves kings and queens already...all too anxious to command..."OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!"...

While these titans of industry are understandably occupied by the full time job of counting their coin, how could anyone expect them to see the damage their greed (er...I mean Greatness!) has had to all those who live downstream!

As the ability to consider consequences is accepted as the defining achievement of "adulthood", this absolute ignorance or disregard of consequences - as critical as destroying the economy...destroying the environment...murdering millions in market-driven wars...enslaving more millions in labor camp/free trade zones...leaving the workers replaced by foreign slave-labor - homeless and starving...even ultimately causing mass extinction...all to make obscene and unjustifiable amounts of money - really shows us that those people are not capable of rational thinking and should be constrained and/or contained...but...not...catered to.

Atlas Shrugged Off Taxes

Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged" fantasizes a world in which
anti-government citizens reject taxes and regulations, and "stop the
motor" by withdrawing themselves from the system of production. In a
perverse twist on the writer's theme the prediction is coming true. But
instead of productive people rejecting taxes, rejected taxes are
shutting down productive people.

Perhaps Ayn Rand never anticipated the impact of unregulated greed on a
productive middle class. Perhaps she never understood the fairness of
tax money for public research and infrastructure and security, all of
which have contributed to the success of big business. She must have
known about the inequality of the pre-Depression years. But she couldn't
have foreseen the concurrent rise in technology and globalization that
allowed inequality to surge again, more quickly, in a manner that
threatens to put the greediest offenders out of our reach.

Ayn Rand's philosophy suggests that average working people are 'takers.'
In reality, those in the best position to make money take all they can
get, with no scruples about their working class victims, because taking, in the minds of the rich, serves as a model for success. The strategy involves tax avoidance, in numerous forms.

Corporations Stopped Paying

In the past twenty years, corporate profits have quadrupled while the corporate tax percent has dropped by half. The payroll tax, paid by workers, has doubled.

In effect, corporations have decided to let middle-class workers pay for
national investments that have largely benefited businesses over the
years. The greater part of basic research, especially for technology and health care, has been conducted with government money. Even today 60% of university research is government-supported. Corporations use
highways and shipping lanes and airports to ship their products, the
FAA and TSA and Coast Guard and Department of Transportation to
safeguard them, a nationwide energy grid to power their factories, and
communications towers and satellites to conduct online business.In effect, corporations have decided to let
middle-class workers pay for national investments that have largely
benefited businesses over the years.

Yet as corporate profits surge and taxes plummet, our infrastructure is deteriorating. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that $3.63 trillion is needed over the next seven years to make the necessary repairs.

Turning Taxes Into Thin Air

Corporations have used numerous and creative means to avoid their tax
responsibilities. They have about a year's worth of profits stashed untaxed overseas. According to the Wall Street Journal, about 60% of their cash is offshore. Yet these corporate 'persons' enjoy a foreign earned income exclusion that real U.S. persons don't get.

Corporate tax haven ploys are legendary, with almost 19,000 companies claiming home office space in one building
in the low-tax Cayman Islands. But they don't want to give up their
U.S. benefits. Tech companies in 19 tax haven jurisdictions received $18.7 billion
in 2011 federal contracts. A lot of smaller companies are legally
exempt from taxes. As of 2008, according to IRS data, fully 69% of U.S.
corporations were organized as nontaxable businesses.

In keeping with Ayn Rand's assurance that "Money is the barometer of a
society's virtue," the super-rich are relentless in their quest to make
more money by eliminating taxes. Instead of calling their income
'income,' they call it "carried interest" or "performance-based earnings" or "deferred pay." And when they cash in their stock options, they might look up last year's lowest price, write that in as a purchase date, cash in the concocted profits, and take advantage of the lower capital gains tax rate.

So Who Has To Pay?

Middle-class families. The $2 trillion in tax losses from
underpayments, expenditures, and tax havens costs every middle-class
family about $20,000 in community benefits, including health care and
education and food and housing.

Schoolkids, too. A study of 265 large companies by Citizens for Tax Justice
(CTJ) determined that about $14 billion per year in state income taxes
was unpaid over three years. That's approximately equal to the loss of
2012-13 education funding due to budget cuts.

And the lowest-income taxpayers make up the difference, based on new data
that shows that the Earned Income Tax Credit is the single biggest
compliance problem cited by the IRS. The average sentence for cheating
with secret offshore financial accounts, according to the Wall Street Journal, is about half as long as in some other types of tax cases.

Atlas Can't Be Found Among the Rich

Only 3 percent of the CEOs, upper management, and financial professionals were entrepreneurs in 2005, even though they made up about 60 percent of the richest .1% of Americans. A recent study
found that less than 1 percent of all entrepreneurs came from very rich
or very poor backgrounds. Job creators come from the middle class.

So if the super-rich are not holding the world on their shoulders, what do they do with their money? According to both Marketwatch and economist Edward Wolff,
over 90 percent of the assets owned by millionaires are held in a
combination of low-risk investments (bonds and cash), personal business
accounts, the stock market, and real estate.

Ayn Rand's hero John Galt
said, "We are on strike against those who believe that one man must
exist for the sake of another." In his world, Atlas has it easy, with
only himself to think about.

Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, an active member of US Uncut
Chicago, founder and developer of social justice and educational
websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org), and the
editor and main author of "American Wars: Illusions and Realities" (Clarity Press). He can be reached at paul@UsAgainstGreed.org.

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.Benjamin FranklinOne has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.Martin Luther King

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."Abraham Lincoln

“If tyranny and oppression come to this land it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”James Madison